Skylanders Party Planning - Part 4, Mod-Podged Shields and Elixir Bottles

One advantage to having a late, freezing-cold spring like this one is that I haven't been distracted by nice weather and have instead been holed up in the craft room, diligently working on projects for upcoming parties.  Here are the latest projects for the Skylanders party... gussied up Dollar Tree Frisbees for the Undead element challeng and the 1st step to transform Orangina bottles into Healing Elixir bottle centerpieces.

Chop-Chop's Shields
As mentioned in this post, I bought some blue Frisbees with plans to turn them into "shields" for the Undead element challenge.  Chop-Chop has a shield that he flings at his enemies - at the party, the guests will fling the Frisbees at an as-yet-to-be-determined target and hopefully not at each other.  Anyhoo, I found an image of Chop-Chop that I modified in Photoshop Elements.  (I subtracted the background - that is all that I know how to do in Photoshop.  Pathetic, I know.)  I then pasted the image into PowerPoint, fiddled with the size a bit, and printed on cardstock.  Traced a circle with a cereal bowl, cut it out, and got out the mod-podge.  This is how it looked just after mod-podging.

This always happens with mod-podge and I always get panicky ("OMG - this looks terrible!  I've ruined it!"), which is silly, because it always ends up fine.  The Frisbees ended up looking like this...

Perfect and beautiful.  Thank you, mod-podge.  I am pleased.  I will work on my panic issues.

Elixir Bottle Transformation, Step 1
As mentioned here, I was originally going to fill the Orangina bottles with blue fluid and serve them as drinks.

This was before I served said Orangina at my egg hunt and nearly everyone took a bottle home with them.  I thought about starting over and buying more, but Orangina is kind of expensive and, let's be honest here, I really don't need those calories, soooo I modified my approach.  Instead of serving drinks, the 4 bottles that didn't walk will become centerpieces.  I plan to fill them with a funky arrangement of colorful balls on pipe cleaner stems (more on that later).  For the 1st step - turning the bottle blue - I found a cool idea on Pinterest to use diluted glue and food coloring "paint" to make glass look like sea glass.  Note, this treatment will not be waterproof!  It was, however, very easy.

Place 1 part glue and 1 part water in a small cup.  You don't need a lot.  Add liquid food coloring until desired shade is achieved.  Mix well with a paint brush that you won't mind throwing away.  Using the paint brush to paint on an even coat of the glue mixture.  It will look a little blotchy, but don't panic - it will dry to a nice even frosted look.

Love it!  Next step is to make a label that looks like an Ankh for each one.  Photoshop, here I come.  In about 10 hours, I should have figured out how to make a label.  Hopefully.  Probably not, though.  (Seriously, am I an idiot?  Is Photoshop hard for anyone else?)